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Host Tom Temin brings you the latest news affecting the federal community each weekday morning, featuring interviews with top government executives and contractors. Listen live from 6 to 9 a.m. or download archived interviews below.

By
Jack Moore

John Mahoney, chairman of the labor and employment practice group, Tully Rinckey

In a July 2010 executive order, President Barack Obama pushed agencies to
hire more people with disabilities, aiming for 100,000 additional workers by 2015.
Agencies have made steady
progress toward that goal, employing more people with disabilities at the end
of the last fiscal year than ever before.

However that progress could be in jeopardy: Complaints alleging disability
discrimination in federal hiring and appointments have ticked upward over the past
five years, according to an analysis of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
data on the federal workforce.

Between fiscal 2006 and 2011, those complaints rose by 32 percent, according to
law firm Tully Rinckey's analysis.

"With those numbers ... that certainly can't help" meet the President's goal,
said John Mahoney, the chair of the firm's labor and employment practice group, in
an interview on Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Emily Kopp

Disabled federal employees also face a number of other forms of discrimination,
and complaints in many of those areas have increased over the past five years,
Mahoney said.

More recently, however, an encouraging trend has emerged. Between 2010 and 2011,
the overall number of disability discrimination complaints declined by 6 percent,
Mahoney said.

"If the trend continues to go the way it's gone this last year, that marks a good
thing for the disabled workers of the federal government,"
Mahoney said.

The federal government made gains in other areas as well. For example, between
2006 and 2011, complaints alleging discrimination against disabled employees in
pay and assignment of duties dropped by double digits.

Mahoney said part of the reason for the increases in some of the areas may be
because of increased awareness of discrimination.

"Through educational outreach by agencies as well as enforcement action by the
EEOC, federal supervisors and managers are becoming more aware and more sensitive
to the needs of disabled workers and the need for reasonable accommodation," he
said.

In addition, a 2008 amendment to the Americans with Disabilities Act has made it
easier to establish disability discrimination cases, Mahoney said.